TecTale
20 Reviews liked by TecTale
GAMER BEWARE
"yooo big monsters to fight with a sword...? epiic gaming time for me" - falsely misled and misguided gamer
WRONG
this is NOT cool slashy epic gaming time - this is arthouse gamers TRICKING you into playing an AESTHETIC PUZZLE game
DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR TRICKS
in this game you will use your THOUGHTS and BRAIN SYRUP to progress - NOT your gaming skills - THIS IS HOW THEY GET YOU
at some point in your playthrough you might even feel tempted to attempt to understand something about the "real world" or perhaps think about "what the author meant by these things"
WARNING: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THIS - THIS IS THEIR ULTIMATE GOAL
there is ZERO quips about beating monsters in this game NOR can you even do a gaming combo on the big bosses, and despite me grinding for hours i didnt level up even once
IF YOU ASK ME, THIS GAME SHOULD BE CALLED SHADOW OF MY COLOSSAL PENIS
"yooo big monsters to fight with a sword...? epiic gaming time for me" - falsely misled and misguided gamer
WRONG
this is NOT cool slashy epic gaming time - this is arthouse gamers TRICKING you into playing an AESTHETIC PUZZLE game
DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR TRICKS
in this game you will use your THOUGHTS and BRAIN SYRUP to progress - NOT your gaming skills - THIS IS HOW THEY GET YOU
at some point in your playthrough you might even feel tempted to attempt to understand something about the "real world" or perhaps think about "what the author meant by these things"
WARNING: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THIS - THIS IS THEIR ULTIMATE GOAL
there is ZERO quips about beating monsters in this game NOR can you even do a gaming combo on the big bosses, and despite me grinding for hours i didnt level up even once
IF YOU ASK ME, THIS GAME SHOULD BE CALLED SHADOW OF MY COLOSSAL PENIS
game companies care so much about making 60 hour 4k season pass 200 billion dollar budget games when what they should be making is metal gear rising: revengeance (2013) for the ps3 and xbox 360
My (18F) SO (47M) won't stop shouting BRAVO NINTENDO every time he is able to climb something, AITA for accidentally calling his videogame "Tears of the Child"?
I feel like I'm going insane seeing people everywhere go "WOW ITS ACTUALLY SO GOOD ITS ACTUALLY BETTER" while never pointing out why, as if you're just supposed to accept that "you can do many things = good videogame"
This was never gonna hit very hard for me unless they changed the format from BotW significantly, and lord knows they didn't have the balls to nudge even a single system from that game. For the record I don't have even a single problem with the bricklayers, the carpenters or the painters of this house, I'd just like a word with the architect. What has been crafted within the format and beyond the systems is pretty nuts - plenty of great quests and open world storytelling, great environmental puzzles (outside of shrines - which are a mixed bag), and a much better presentation than before.
There's still very little point in interacting with much of the world, combat - being mostly centered on physics cheese - still feels like a round of TABS, Link still has to run around grinding for food like he's in an early access survival sim, clothes and temperature are still non-systems that basically just make you menu a whole lot more and your path still consists of 80% completely forgettable, mind numbing gliding/climbing from point A to point B.
This time however, you're much less interrupted by discovery and exploration, as you already know what's beyond the horizon, seeing as a large majority of the game takes places on more or less the same map. This was a dumb decision taken by an idiot. There are very little soyface moments to be had if you already played the previous game, and you're also supposed to believe that the new stuff they did add (both world and story) was just uh.. it was just hiding last time okay!! Stop thinking about it!!!
I actually really like the final act or so of the story, at least presentation wise, but the substance of the whole thing is extremely lacking and you can pretty much figure out the entire plot in broad strokes from seeing maybe 10% of it.
Temples are much better looking now and a little bit better gameplay wise - but shrines? Flip a coin man. Sometimes they're way better than anything in BotW and sometimes it's like "hurr duur here is a big stick and a lever with no big stick on it, wonder what to do man haha". Thanks Dora, I'll bring out the notebook see if we can't crack this conumdrum. A lot of the shrine puzzles are solved upon a single glance and then take significant time and fiddling to actually execute, which just feels like you're jerking off with the HL2 gravity gun for several minutes trying to make a plate balance on a stick, and fast solve + long execute = YAWN. In BotW some shrines had "alternative" solutions where you could solve the shrine in other ways than intended - I thought this was neat. In TotK, most shrines can be skipped entirely if you strap a single rocket to any of your backup shields. For a while I tested the limits of this by simply strapping every rocket I found to a shield and skipping around 4-6 shrines in a row by simply flying over the content after doing the solve in my head in 5 seconds and not wanting to bother with the execute. I don't think this is neat.
The Ascend ability in particular legitimately has like one puzzle you can make with it - you go up through roof. Is there a roof? If yes, use ability menu. It sometimes feels like it was made entirely so designers could spend less time making sure every cave had an exit. Rewind is not much better - it's impressive technologically but as an actual level design tool it's insanely one dimensional and when they try to make it not one dimensional by making shit that flips and turns so you can't "just" rewind it in the same angle, it becomes extremely finicky and feels like physics cheese again.
Closing rant:
Little Big Planet cars have zero place in Zelda and I'll never be convinced otherwise. I have been completely unimmersed since the second I saw rockets lying around for no reason. Oh and while I'm at it fuck your Purah pad bullshit ass in-universe Switch too. It's not cute Nintendo!!! It just looks fucking weird!!! No one else has one! Those fantasy creatures would freak the fuck out if they saw a handheld tablet!!! Fuck you!!!!!
Final score: Why is it so empty in the basement
I feel like I'm going insane seeing people everywhere go "WOW ITS ACTUALLY SO GOOD ITS ACTUALLY BETTER" while never pointing out why, as if you're just supposed to accept that "you can do many things = good videogame"
This was never gonna hit very hard for me unless they changed the format from BotW significantly, and lord knows they didn't have the balls to nudge even a single system from that game. For the record I don't have even a single problem with the bricklayers, the carpenters or the painters of this house, I'd just like a word with the architect. What has been crafted within the format and beyond the systems is pretty nuts - plenty of great quests and open world storytelling, great environmental puzzles (outside of shrines - which are a mixed bag), and a much better presentation than before.
There's still very little point in interacting with much of the world, combat - being mostly centered on physics cheese - still feels like a round of TABS, Link still has to run around grinding for food like he's in an early access survival sim, clothes and temperature are still non-systems that basically just make you menu a whole lot more and your path still consists of 80% completely forgettable, mind numbing gliding/climbing from point A to point B.
This time however, you're much less interrupted by discovery and exploration, as you already know what's beyond the horizon, seeing as a large majority of the game takes places on more or less the same map. This was a dumb decision taken by an idiot. There are very little soyface moments to be had if you already played the previous game, and you're also supposed to believe that the new stuff they did add (both world and story) was just uh.. it was just hiding last time okay!! Stop thinking about it!!!
I actually really like the final act or so of the story, at least presentation wise, but the substance of the whole thing is extremely lacking and you can pretty much figure out the entire plot in broad strokes from seeing maybe 10% of it.
Temples are much better looking now and a little bit better gameplay wise - but shrines? Flip a coin man. Sometimes they're way better than anything in BotW and sometimes it's like "hurr duur here is a big stick and a lever with no big stick on it, wonder what to do man haha". Thanks Dora, I'll bring out the notebook see if we can't crack this conumdrum. A lot of the shrine puzzles are solved upon a single glance and then take significant time and fiddling to actually execute, which just feels like you're jerking off with the HL2 gravity gun for several minutes trying to make a plate balance on a stick, and fast solve + long execute = YAWN. In BotW some shrines had "alternative" solutions where you could solve the shrine in other ways than intended - I thought this was neat. In TotK, most shrines can be skipped entirely if you strap a single rocket to any of your backup shields. For a while I tested the limits of this by simply strapping every rocket I found to a shield and skipping around 4-6 shrines in a row by simply flying over the content after doing the solve in my head in 5 seconds and not wanting to bother with the execute. I don't think this is neat.
The Ascend ability in particular legitimately has like one puzzle you can make with it - you go up through roof. Is there a roof? If yes, use ability menu. It sometimes feels like it was made entirely so designers could spend less time making sure every cave had an exit. Rewind is not much better - it's impressive technologically but as an actual level design tool it's insanely one dimensional and when they try to make it not one dimensional by making shit that flips and turns so you can't "just" rewind it in the same angle, it becomes extremely finicky and feels like physics cheese again.
Closing rant:
Little Big Planet cars have zero place in Zelda and I'll never be convinced otherwise. I have been completely unimmersed since the second I saw rockets lying around for no reason. Oh and while I'm at it fuck your Purah pad bullshit ass in-universe Switch too. It's not cute Nintendo!!! It just looks fucking weird!!! No one else has one! Those fantasy creatures would freak the fuck out if they saw a handheld tablet!!! Fuck you!!!!!
Final score: Why is it so empty in the basement
Octopath Traveler
2018
it's entirely possible the final 30 hours of this game are peak, but i'm absolutely not willing to go from the 10 hour mark to the 20 hour mark
going in blind through 8 prologues only to be met with an actual level gap of 10 levels to the next quest at level 15 is insane - i did my best to stick with it but after going at it and realizing it would be several hours just for half of the party unless i did some serious wikicheesing ive decided there's about 15 atelier games more worth my time for the same output
it's a shame because the fundamentals - combat, visuals, sound, world design and character writing - all seem excellent, but it's like they released this with a force field around it to keep anyone but people who calculate game ratings by ($/hour of playtime) away from it
at least it made an engine for old square jrpgs to be remastered in
going in blind through 8 prologues only to be met with an actual level gap of 10 levels to the next quest at level 15 is insane - i did my best to stick with it but after going at it and realizing it would be several hours just for half of the party unless i did some serious wikicheesing ive decided there's about 15 atelier games more worth my time for the same output
it's a shame because the fundamentals - combat, visuals, sound, world design and character writing - all seem excellent, but it's like they released this with a force field around it to keep anyone but people who calculate game ratings by ($/hour of playtime) away from it
at least it made an engine for old square jrpgs to be remastered in
the C in CRPG stands for cwiksave
what a nice little old piece of shit, awful game, love it
id honestly expect an "enhanced edition" to at least fix the most annoying bugs, perhaps add a better tutorial and maybe even add some basic QoL stuff - as it stands i couldnt even tell you what the EE added to this and you could definitely fool me into this being the original release outside of like screen resolution options
i have yet to play a d&d game that fixes the "videogame characters look really stupid swinging and missing 8 times in a row" dilemma
what a nice little old piece of shit, awful game, love it
id honestly expect an "enhanced edition" to at least fix the most annoying bugs, perhaps add a better tutorial and maybe even add some basic QoL stuff - as it stands i couldnt even tell you what the EE added to this and you could definitely fool me into this being the original release outside of like screen resolution options
i have yet to play a d&d game that fixes the "videogame characters look really stupid swinging and missing 8 times in a row" dilemma